Photo How To

The print completes the creative circle you began inscribing when you first viewed the image and snapped the shutter. The beauty of black and white printmaking is that you can share that vision through interpretive techniques that include expressive use of tonality, artful contrast and exposure control. Yes, digital images can be viewed on a screen and shared through the Internet to a worldwide audience. But nothing quite matches the intimate beauty of a carefully produced print, one that can be hung on a wall in your home or a gallery.

An exposed photographic plate or a segment of exposed film inside a dark camera body are analog equivalents of today’s Raw file. Before digital technology made it possible to capture visual images electronically, a photograph was visible only after it had been processed in a darkroom with chemicals. Now the processing is handled either in camera or by Raw rendering software. The word “Raw” is not an acronym; it’s a simple description for a file that contains pure data, invisible to the human eye.

The camera Michael carries might be his Leica M6, loaded with either Ilford XP-2 or Kodak BW400CN chromogenic film and fitted with either a 35mm f/2 or 50mm f/2 Summicron lens; or his Fuji X10 point-and-shoot with its zoom lens set for the equivalent of 50mm; or his Nikon D200 or D700 with the manual 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor lens he got with his F3 back when he was in college.

While you as the photographer own the copyright to images you create, this does not negate the privacy rights of any recognizable individual in your photo. Knowing when you can sell or lease that image with or without a model release is important. In this article we cover that ground as well as the impact of social media and new technology on privacy rights and model releases.

A powerful portfolio involves so much more than just a strong grasp of the technical aspects of photography—it’s a complex mix of style, techniques, and intriguing ideas. Many photographers struggle to achieve a high-impact portfolio, feeling that they lack the creative spark to invigorate them and move their work forward.

As technology changes so do methods of presentation. In this article I set out to discover what type of portfolio photographers have found work best and, from the buyer’s perspective, what type or types they prefer. As I conducted the interviews among art directors, photo reps, and photographers it all began to boil down to this: how do you get your work seen by potential clients and how do you craft an effective portfolio that makes sense to them and represents your craft and passion?

One of the primary differences between a photograph and the real world is that reality has three dimensions: height, width, and depth. Your photos, of course, only have two—height and width. Any depth that exists in a photograph is purely an optical illusion. Even if you were able to create a print that was the exact same size as the scene (and wouldn’t that be fun) it would still pale beside the real thing because of the lack of that third dimension.